II. Our state by grace.—1. The legal barriers are removed by the blood of Christ shed on the cross. 2. The moral alienation is removed by the blood of Christ as applied to the believer by the Holy Spirit. 3. The nearness to God thus effected is a valuable privilege. It includes reconciliation, friendship, communion. Sinner, apply now to be made nigh. Believer, remember thy obligations.—G. Brooks.
Vers. 14, 15. Death a Peacemaker.—The struggle between the Northern and Southern States of America closed for ever at the funeral of General Grant. The armies of rebellion surrendered twenty years before; but the solemn and memorable pageant at the tomb of the great Union soldier, where the leading generals of the living Union and of the dead Confederacy stood shoulder to shoulder and mingled their tears in a common grief—this historical event marked the absolute conclusion of sectional animosity in America.
Ver. 16. The Power of the Gospel to dissolve the Enmity of the Human Heart against God.—1. The goodness of God destroys the enmity of the human mind. When every other argument fails, this, if perceived by the eye of faith, finds its powerful and persuasive way through every barrier of resistance. Try to approach the heart of man by the instruments of terror and of authority, and it will disdainfully repel you. There is not one of you skilled in the management of human nature who does not perceive that, though this may be a way of working on the other principles of our constitution—of working on the fears of man, or on his sense of interest—this is not the way of gaining by a single hair-breadth on the attachments of his heart. Such a way may force, or it may terrify, but it never, never can endear; and after all the threatening array of such an influence as this is brought to bear upon man, there is not one particle of service it can extort from him but what is all rendered in the spirit of a painful and reluctant bondage. Now this is not the service which prepares for heaven. This is not the service which assimilates men to angels. This is not the obedience of those glorified spirits, whose every affection harmonises with their every performance, and the very essence of whose piety consists of delight in God and the love they bear to Him. To bring up man to such an obedience as this, his heart behoved to be approached in a particular way; and no such way is to be found but within the limits of the Christian revelation. There alone you see God, without injury to His other attributes, plying the heart of man with the irresistible argument of kindness. There alone do you see the great Lord of heaven and of earth, setting Himself forth to the most worthless and the most wandering of His children—putting forth His hand to the work of healing the breach which sin had made between them—telling them that His Word could not be mocked, and his justice could not be defied and trampled on, and that it was not possible for His perfections to receive the slightest taint in the eyes of the creation He had thrown around them; but that all this was provided for, and not a single creature within the compass of the universe He has formed could now say that forgiveness to man was degrading to the authority of God, and that by the very act of atonement, which poured a glory over all the high attributes of His character, His mercy might now burst forth without limit and without control upon a guilty world, and the broad flag of invitation be unfurled in the sight of all its families. 2. Let the sinner, then, look to God through the medium of such a revelation, and the sight which meets him there may well tame the obstinacy of that heart which had wrapped itself up in impenetrable hardness against the force of every other consideration. Now that the storm of the Almighty’s wrath has been discharged upon Him who bore the burden of the world’s atonement, He has turned His throne of glory into a throne of grace and cleared away from the pavilion of His residence all the darkness which encompassed it. The God who dwelleth there is God in Christ; and the voice He sends from it to this dark and rebellious province of His mighty empire is a voice of the most beseeching tenderness. Goodwill to men is the announcement with which His messengers come fraught to a guilty world; and, since the moment in which it burst upon mortal ears from the peaceful canopy of heaven, may the ministers of salvation take it up, and go round with it among all the tribes and individuals of the species. Such is the real aspect of God towards you. He cannot bear that His alienated children should be finally and everlastingly away from Him. He feels for you all the longing of a parent bereaved of his offspring. To woo you back again unto Himself He scatters among you the largest and the most liberal assurances, and with a tone of imploring tenderness does He say to one and all of you, “Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?” (Ezek. xxxiii. 11). He has no pleasure in your death. He does not wish to glorify Himself by the destruction of any one of you. “Look to Me, all ye ends of the earth, and be saved” (Isa. xlv. 22), is the wide and generous announcement by which He would recall, from the outermost limits of His sinful creation, the most worthless and polluted of those who have wandered away from Him. 3. Now give us a man who perceives, with the eye of his mind, the reality of all this, and you give us a man in possession of the principle of faith. Give us a man in possession of this faith; and his heart, shielded as it were against the terrors of a menacing Deity, is softened and subdued, and resigns its every affection at the moving spectacle of a beseeching Deity; and thus it is, that faith manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it, of working by love. Give us a man in possession of this love; and, animated as he is with the living principle of that obedience, where the willing and delighted consent of the inner man goes along with the performance of the outer man, his love manifests the attribute which the Bible assigns to it when it says, “This is the love of God, that ye keep His commandments.” And thus it is, amid the fruitfulness of every other expedient, when power threatened to crush the heart which it could not soften—when authority lifted its voice, and laid on man an enactment of love which it could not carry—when terror shot its arrows, and they dropped ineffectual from that citadel of the human affections, which stood proof against the impression of every one of them—when wrath mustered up its appalling severities, and filled that bosom with despair which it could not fill with the warmth of a confiding attachment—then the kindness of an inviting God was brought to bear on the heart of man, and got an opening through all its mysterious avenues. Goodness did what the nakedness of power could not do. It found its way through all intricacies of the human constitution, and there, depositing the right principle of repentance, did it establish the alone effectual security for the right purposes and the right fruits of repentance.—Dr. T. Chalmers.
Ver. 18. The Privilege of Access to the Father.—In the Temple service of the Jews all did not enjoy equal privileges. The court of the Gentiles was outside that of the Jews and separated from it by “a marble screen or enclosure three cubits in height, beautifully ornamented with carving, but bearing inscriptions, in Greek and Roman characters, forbidding any Gentile to pass within its boundary.” Such restricted access to God the new dispensation was designed to abolish. The middle wall of partition is now broken down, and through Christ we, both Jews and Gentiles—all mankind—have equal access by one Spirit unto the Father. Observe:—
I. The privilege of access unto the Father.—That God is the proper object of worship is implied in our text, and more explicitly declared in other portions of the sacred writings. According to the nature of the blessings desired, prayer may be addressed to any of the three Persons in the Godhead; but the Bible teaches that prayer generally is to be presented to the Father through Christ and by the Holy Spirit. And so appropriate are the offices of the Persons in the Trinity that we cannot speak otherwise. We cannot say that through the Spirit and by the Father we have access to Christ, or through the Father and by Christ we have access to the Spirit. We must observe the apostle’s order—through Christ and by the Spirit we have access to the Father. Access unto the Father implies:—
1. His sympathy with us.—God is our Creator and Sovereign, but His authority is not harsh or arbitrary. He does not even deal with us according to the stern dictates of untempered justice. On the contrary, in love and sympathy He has for our benefit made His throne accessible. He will listen to our penitential confessions, our vows of obedience, our statements of want. He has sympathy with us.
2. His ability to help us.—That access is permitted to us, taken in connection with God’s perfections, prove this. He raises no hope to disappoint, does not encourage that He may repel, but permits access that He may help and bless.
3. His permission to speak freely.—There is nothing contracted in God’s method of blessing. We are introduced to His presence not to stand dumb before Him, nor to speak under the influence of slavish fear. We have such liberty as those enjoy who are introduced to the presence of a prince by a distinguished favourite, or such freedom as children have in addressing a father. We are brought into the presence of our King by His Own Son; to our heavenly Father by Christ, our elder Brother. The results of this access to ourselves: 1. It teaches dependence; 2. Excites gratitude; 3. Produces comfort; 4. Promotes growth in grace.
II. The medium of access.—Under the law the high priest was the mediator through whom the people drew near to God. He went into the “holiest of all, once every year, not without blood, which he offered for himself, and for the errors of the people” (Heb. ix. 7). Under the new covenant “boldness to enter into the holiest” is “by the blood of Jesus” (Heb. x. 19). But as the mediation of the Jewish high priest, though “done away in Christ,” was typical, it may serve to teach us how we are to come to God. He sprinkled the blood of the sin-offering on the mercy-seat and burnt incense within the veil (Lev. xvi.), thus symbolising the sacrifice and intercession of Christ.
1. We, then, have access to God through Christ as a sacrifice.—“Without shedding of blood is no remission” (Heb. ix. 22). But, “that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” we could never, as suppliants, have found acceptance with God.